As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the implementation of teleconsultation in the delivery of school psychological services has increased notoriously in many countries throughout the last year. With the aim of supporting evidence-based practices on this matter, we conducted a rapid systematic evidence review on the efficacy of teleconsultation as compared to in-person consultation in the delivery of school psychological services. From a total of 3,873 references identified through our search, only three (< 1%) reports met eligibility criteria for this review. One of these studies showed serious risk of bias according to the ROBINS-I rating scale (Sterne et al., 2016) and was therefore excluded from further analyses. Due to insufficient data, we were unable to compute meta-analyses and for this reason summarized the available evidence in a narrative style. Overall, the limited evidence that we identified seems to indicate that the impact of teleconsultation in the delivery of school psychological services on consumer satisfaction and evaluated mental health outcomes of service users is equivalent or slightly higher to in-person consultation. However, this information needs to be interpreted with caution due to the scarcity of available data, as well as methodological limitations. Our findings may serve as a basis for policymakers and school psychologists to guide an evidence-based implementation of teleconsultation practices, as well as a starting point for researchers to build on previous work when designing future studies in this field.
Efficacy of Remote as Compared to In-Person School Psychological Services: A Rapid Systematic Evidence Review
